The Three Hunters ... more like the Three Strollers, amirite?

and can we keep to the fucking metric system? or at least translate it?!

Norc wrote:Eldo's and Norc's calculations. i want credit too!

Sorry. I'm not really on top of things today  

thank you.

Norc wrote:and can we keep to the fucking metric system? or at least translate it?!

A mile is about 1.61 kilometers.

Norc wrote:and can we keep to the fucking metric system? or at least translate it?!

I think we should keep it in leagues.  And actually that's an interesting point.

Eldo cites Unfinished Tales: Gladden Fields: Appendix for his conversion from leagues to miles.  But that was an unpublished note by JRRT "concerning  the different routes from Osgiraith to Imladris." In this specific case he states that he has chosen to use "League" as a substitute for the Numenorean "lar". Calculations follow to show that the lar is approximately equivalent to 3 miles. He chose "league" simply because it was the "longest unit."

So here's my question: Is there anything to indicate that Eomer was thinking in Numenorean lar when he said, "Forty leagues and five you have measured ere the fourth day ended" ?

The simplest meaning of a league is something like "an hour's walk".   At any given time in history some army or other may have been imposing a local standard of anywhere between 2 and 4 miles (That's 3 to 6 km for Norc.  If Amarië pops in, I'll happily convert to Coke bottles and rolls of toilet paper if necessary  ), but the basic meaning was "an hour's march".  Nautically, it was used even differently, being related to the distance to the horizon. I'm sure Tolkien was aware of and enjoyed all the ambiguity surrounding "league" when he chose to use the unit in LotR.

In that context, I think it would be reasonable for Legolas when he says of the orcs, "They are many leagues away: twelve I would guess; but the flatness of the plain is hard to measure," to potentially have meant it would be a 12 hour march for a company of elves, for example. Whereas when Eomer used the term, it might equally well have meant it would take 45 hours for mounted horsemen to cover the same distance Aragorn and company had just covered on foot. It's a culturally flexible term.

{{There! I hope I've successfully muddied the waters....  }}

well it would be a superhuman effort for a drunken Scotshobbit who spent most of the journey with his mush to the Muil.

True but beside the point!!!!   

I just came back from a 6.8 mi/11 km walk and my feet hurt. They usually hurt worse and I usually get badly chafed and blistered. I don't know what marathon runners go through but I myself can't imagine walking or marching for more than 2 consecutive hours. I have flat feet so maybe that accounts for some of the discomfort, but I imagine even the soundest feet would start to ache eventually.

So, calculating distance is all well and good but human(oid) endurance and the need for hydration (which I haven't noticed mentioned in this thread) should be taken into account as well. Walking tends to be hard on the feet and they obviously couldn't have run or even jogged the whole way. So, I dunno, maybe Eomer was right to be impressed  

Well the closest equivalent I have ever done is the West Highland Way ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Highland_Way ) which I did for charity in my youth.
And your comment about hydration is very true, you need a lot of fluids.

When it comes to sore feet and blisters the chances of them are much reduced by having a good pair of hiking boots that are 'broken in'- I imagine Aragorn's at least would qualify for that.
Its also run as the West Highland Way Race, covering 96 miles- the best time for it is 15:07:29, seconds.

How long did it take to walk that? And how many rest stops did you take?

Six days and we obviously stopped at night, and for lunch. We didn't really have scheduled stops other than that, just whenever there was a seemingly good combination of weather and view (it rained for most of those 6 days   ) and of course we walked it rather than running or jogging (I was about 14 at the time)

So, about average then.

  (We may have been slowed somewhat by pubs en-route)

Seriously?

I am always serious about pubs    

We once covered somewhere between 90 and 100 km in 25 hours on an excercise, and we walked both in terrain and on gravel roads. I'm sure more hardcore people than us could cover a lot more in the same time, but our feet were definitely sore after this, and it was the start of what would be 6 or 7 days with minimal rest and next to no food (I think we ate food equivalent to about 300 calories ). I've read LotR once after this and the other excercises we went through, and I remember reading the book from a very different point of view then. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli's chase, Frodo and Sam's struggle with exhaustion in Mordor, what it feels like to walk on for hours on end knowing you can't sleep for days, and knowing that there will be nothing to eat when you reach your destination. Rereading LotR this time it was easier to see where and how Tolkien's writing is influenced by experiences from his time in the military, and also that his service was far more terrible and frightening than mine will ever be. It gave me renewed respect for him as a person as well as a writer

So no pub stops then?

But I agree, Tolkien knew what fatigue is. Something I found the radio play brought out well was how stressed and snappy Sam and Frodo become at one another in Mordor from time to time.

I've run marathons, and I could hardly walk afterwards. I'd always take a week off from training afterwards. I wouldn't even have thought of fighting orcs for another week after that.  

When traveling, I found I could walk 20-25 miles a day, but my feet and ankles would get sorer and sorer, no matter how well I took care of them. If every week I took a rest day however, I could keep it up for quite some time. The Sabbath idea really isn't such a bad one!

check these guys out, the Native American Tarahumara tribe, these guys are the only humans who could be described as superhuman runners, the only ones capable of running all the way with the Hunters, fascinating stuff.

The Tarahumara word for themselves, Rarámuri, means "runners on foot" or "those who run fast" in their native tongue according to some early ethnographers like Norwegian Carl Lumholtz, though this interpretation has not been fully agreed upon. With widely dispersed settlements, these people developed a tradition of long-distance running up to 200 miles (320 km) in one session, over a period of two days through their homeland of rough canyon country, for inter-village communication and transportation and hunting. Their running in sandals is described in the book Born to Run.
The Tarahumara use the toe-strike method of running, which is natural for barefoot running. The long-distance running tradition also has ceremonial and competitive aspects.
The statement that, "The Tarahumara may be the finest natural distance runners in the world", made by University of Arizona archeologist Michael Jenk inson, offers some insight into just how good the indians are at running. The Tarahumara routinely run distances only covered by only the most advanced ultramarathon runners today. To these indians, running is more than sport, running is literally life. The Tarahumara live in very rugged land and travel by wagon or horses is usually impractical. Because of this, foot travel is more often than not the best option for getting from one place to another and it is usually the quickest. While on foot, the Tarahumara do not stroll from one place to their destination, running is used to perform everyday tasks. It is not uncommon for a Tarahumara to travel between fifty and eighty miles everyday at a "race" like pace.

Tarahumara running is based on endurance not speed. This fact is exemplified by their hunting practices. In order to catch such wild animals as deer, wild turkeys, and rabbits, the Tarahumara simply chase after the animal until the animal drops from exhaustion. Their hunting practices are widely known in Mexico and ranchers have been known to hire the indians to chase down wild horses . It is also said that a Tarahumara once ran six hundred miles in five days to deliver a very important message. Their endurance and conditioning has become k nown worldwide. Says Dale Groom, M.D., "Probably not since the days of the ancient Spartans has a people achieved such a high state of physical conditioning."   

yeah, humans in general are only good for one thing, if u look past intelect and the fact we made weapons and machinses and etc, we don't have claws or particularly sharp teeth, nor are we very strong or fast, but humans are extremely good at endurance, running long distances, because we run after our prays (is that spelled right?)  so it isn't really special for those native people, it actually goes for all humans. although some fat westerners have perhaps lost the ability and some tribes have kept it more or less in traditions, it is actually a universal human trait. remember where humans originated from.

That is pretty amazing. It blows my mind that people used to run on bare feet and still do.

Norc wrote:yeah, humans in general are only good for one thing, if u look past intelect and the fact we made weapons and machinses and etc, we don't have claws or particularly sharp teeth, nor are we very strong or fast, but humans are extremely good at endurance, running long distances, because we run after our prays (is that spelled right?)

It's prey.

Radaghast wrote:That is pretty amazing. It blows my mind that people used to run on bare feet and still do.

yeah, they didn't climb down the trees and immediately invented shoes.